1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerator, and, more particularly, to a refrigerator which includes a shaved ice dispensing unit equipped within a freezing compartment door to dispense shaved ice, and an ice dispensing unit equipped within an ice cube container to dispense ice cubes and crushed ice.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a refrigerator includes a freezing compartment, and a refrigerating compartment, which are partitioned from each other to store various foods at a low temperature in an appropriate state for a long time. The refrigerating compartment includes various refrigerated foods, such as vegetables and fruits, which require storage above freezing, and the freezing compartment includes various frozen foods, such as pork, beef, and fish, which require storage below freezing.
The freezing compartment includes an automatic icemaker to produce ice cubes of a predetermined size or more using cold air circulating within the freezing compartment. The automatic icemaker includes an ice tray to automatically freeze water into the ice cubes, and an ice cube container disposed below the ice tray to contain the ice cubes produced in the ice tray. The automatic icemaker is configured such that, after water is automatically fed into the ice tray and formed into the ice cubes, the ice cubes are automatically conveyed to and contained within the ice cube container, and such that, in the event of a deficiency of the ice cubes within the ice cube container, the above mentioned automatic process of producing the ice cubes is repeated by supplying water into the ice tray.
However, since the conventional refrigerator is not provided with a shaved ice dispensing unit to dispense shaved ice after making the ice cubes produced by the automatic icemaker into the shaved ice, it is very inconvenient for users of the conventional refrigerator to produce the shaved ice, for example, when making iced beverages using the shaved ice.